This course will provide engineers with the tools necessary to economically evaluate their decisions and designs. These tools and techniques use basic economic concepts enabling effective communication between engineers and the business world regarding recommended courses of action. The course will stress evaluation using dollars and cents as opposed to tolerances and engineering specifications.
Included will be the principles of engineering economics (the time value of money, interest, cash flow diagrams and economic equivalences), general introduction to decision making (identifying the problem, generating alternative solutions and estimating measures of effectiveness for each alternative), single project decision-making (analysis of cash flows to decide to accept or reject an alternative solution), multiple project decision-making (analysis of alternatives with different service lives and different measures of effectiveness) and post selection analysis (analysis for the purpose of improving future project decision-making).
Prerequisites: COSK2220 or COSK2225 and 45 Credits3 Credits